Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) investigates reports of abuse and neglect of children and steps in to remove kids from dangerous homes. The agency provides services to children and families in their homes, places kids in foster care and provides services to help kids in foster care transition into adulthood.

In 2004, Davontae Marcel Williams, on the left, was found starved to death. Lisa Ann Coleman, on the right, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday night for her role in the boy's death. If carried out, she would be the sixth woman to be executed in Texas since 1982.

UPDATED:Lisa Ann Coleman, 38, was executed Wednesday for the starvation death of her girlfriend’s son, Davontae Marcel Williams, 9. Coleman is the the sixth woman to be executed in the state since 1982.

Though the state offers free tuition and fees for certain former foster youth who enroll at public colleges and universities, relatively few take advantage of the opportunity. The issue has received increased attention in state government, and lawmakers have been encouraged to examine ways to get more foster youths into higher education.

Like most child welfare agencies nationwide, Texas Child Protective Services has had its share of problems. Officials say reforms have made clear improvements. But the agency still faces problems. And a federal court case in Corpus Christi set for trial Dec. 1 is causing significant unease.

On the heels of an expansion of Fort Bliss in recent years, El Paso is seeing an increase in the number of children who can't be placed in foster homes because there aren't enough English-speaking homes available. It's a unique problem that stems from the demographic disparity between the population in the city and on the base.

John Specia (left), the commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Kyle Janek testify Feb. 20, 2014, at a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has ramped up its efforts to conduct predictive data analysis and reduce the high turnover of CPS caseworkers, the agency’s commissioner told a panel of senators on Thursday.

Texas' child welfare agency has launched a new program aimed at improving foster care in the state. Now in effect in 60 counties, the program attempts to keep children close to their communities and reduce the number of times they move between homes.

The Department of Family and Protective Services is moving forward on redesigning its foster care system, which will outsource services to private contractors. At a hearing Monday, some raised concerns about accountability.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the national child advocacy group Children's Rights cannot file its class-action suit on behalf of all 12,000 youth in Texas' long-term foster care system.

Child Protective Services officials got an earful on Wednesday at a Senate hearing on improving the caseworker retention and turnover rates in rural communities. And they got a minor scolding from Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, who assumed they would come armed with more data and possible solutions than they did.

More children than ever are living in poverty in Texas, and experts speculate that the seemingly unending recession is a key factor in the increase in reports of child abuse and neglect statewide. The number of reported cases of abuse has grown 6 percent in Texas since 2008, and service providers are struggling to keep up with the need for help.

More than 2,000 people listed in a statewide database of people who mistreat children are caught in a backlog of cases waiting for appeals. The accused say they're effectively blacklisted, their lives put on hold. State officials say the backlog is a safety issue that could potentially endanger children.

Attorney General Greg Abbott and former first lady Laura Bush are leading an effort to recruit more court-appointed special advocates for foster kids. With 42,000 children in the system, Gretch Sanders of KUT News reports on the growing need for so-called CASA volunteers.

“Dear future son,” the North Texas father wrote in a prospective adoption letter filled with promises of family bike rides and summer road trips. “I am a single dad who adopted a middle school boy in 2008. Now we are looking for one more kid so he will have a brother.” But the father never got custody of a second child. Instead, he received a phone call from a child placement agency with shocking news: He couldn't adopt again because his son, who was sexually abused and beaten by his biological parents, is on a state registry of people who abuse children.

The budget draft filed last week provided the first glimpse at the kind of deep cuts that state agencies could see in the next biennium. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, advocates are particularly worried about what the final budget could hold for the agency that protects children from abuse and neglect.

The state has shut down Daystar Residential Inc. in Manvel, the facility where The Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle revealed that staff had forced young girls with disabilities to fight each other.

When foster kids bounce from placement to placement, they leave their belongings with state child welfare workers — where advocates say they often get misplaced, given to the wrong child or even stolen.

Warren Jeffs has made it to Texas. The embattled leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — the polygamous Mormon breakaway sect whose Eldorado ranch was raided by child welfare officials in 2008 — will stand trial in San Angelo for allegedly sexually assaulting a child.

The same Houston-area residential treatment center where staffers forced disabled girls to fight each other — prompting child welfare officials to halt admissions and hire a safety monitor — is now under fire for the asphyxiation of a 16-year-old boy who died Friday after a restraint was applied by a staffer in a closet.

A new report details an undercover investigation of federally funded child care subsidy programs by the GAO in five states, including Texas. The GAO determined that the Texas program was vulnerable to fraud.

The commissioner of the state's Department of Family and Protective Services talked to the Tribune about the planned redesign of Texas' foster care system — one she hopes will keep kids close to home and connected to their siblings and reduce their time in state custody.